The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear President Donald Trump’s appeal of a $5 million civil judgment, leaving intact a jury’s finding that he sexually abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s.
The justices denied review without comment and noted no public dissents, effectively ending Trump’s challenge to the 2023 verdict.
The decision leaves standing one of the most consequential legal judgments against a sitting president: a federal jury unanimously concluded that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room and later defamed her by publicly branding her allegations a hoax.
Trump responded on social media by calling the lawsuit a “Fake Case” and vowed to continue fighting what he described as “Weaponization and Lawfare.”
Carroll celebrated the decision in a Substack post, calling the decision a victory “for every woman in the world!”
Her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said the Supreme Court’s action “affirms once and for all the jury’s unanimous verdict that President Donald J. Trump sexually assaulted and defamed E. Jean Carroll,” adding that Trump’s repeated appeals had failed and that his efforts to avoid accountability had come to an end.
The case stemmed from Carroll’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of the New York department store in the mid-1990s.
In May 2023, a federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, awarding Carroll $5 million in damages.
Although the jury did not find Trump liable for rape under New York’s legal definition, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan later concluded that the verdict established Trump had forcibly sexually abused Carroll.
The Supreme Court’s action follows a December 2024 ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the verdict and rejecting Trump’s claims that trial evidence, including testimony from other women and excerpts from the 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording, deprived him of a fair trial.
The jury found Trump liable on both counts, awarding Carroll $5 million in damages: $2 million in compensatory damages for Trump sexually abusing her, plus $20,000 in punitive damages; and $1.7 million in damages for a reputation repair program, plus $1 million in other damages on the defamation count.
Carrol a second trial that resulted from comments Trump made while in office during his first term after Carroll first made the accusations publicly.
That separate defamation case remains pending. In January 2024, another federal jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million for defamatory statements he made in 2019 after she first accused him of sexual assault.
Trump’s attorneys have indicated they also plan to ask the Supreme Court to review that judgment.
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